Ryding 9th in Olympic Slalom

Dave Ryding moved up from 25th place after the first run in the Olympic slalom this morning to finish 9th in the competition after posting the fastest run of the day in his second run, six seconds faster than his first.

The competition was won by Sweden's Andre Myhrer, with Swiss skier Ramon Zenhaeusern winning silver and Austria's Michael Matt bronze.

"At the start of the day if you'd said ninth I'd have said , it's solid. I had a couple of mistakes there that were a bit costly. I feel I could have done more but I think a lot of other people do as well. At the end of the day ninth's what I got," said Ryding, "A top ten at the Olympics after the dust settles I'll be pretty proud of and in four years' time I will have something to really build on."
On the prospect of going for a medal at Beijing 2022.

"Myhrer is 35 and the last winner Mario Matt was also 35 and at the next Olympics I'm 35 so I'll try to keep that trend going. I came to it really late so I'm still warming up. I'm more than motivated to keep going – obviously I'm a little tired, this job is stressful, but I'm more than motivated to keep going and keep improving. Hopefully I can podium again in between the Olympics to show people I can do it. I believe I've got it in me, I'm just not leaving it all out there all the time."

Britain's other entrant Laurie Taylor (22 )finished 26th on his Olympic debut in a time of 1:43.41. Result was one place better than Dave Ryding achieved on his Olympic slalom debut in 2010.

"I'm so happy to have made it through to the finish line. It was a fight to get down but I'm really happy. Conditions are decent but the snow is so aggressive so it's really unforgiving. So if you make a mistake, it amplifies it and it's hard to deal with that. It was super fun, the first time getting a clean course at one of these events and to finish top 30. That's where I was hoping for. I didn't know I could get it so I'm so chuffed. Watching Dave push the top guys in the world has been great to watch and I look up to him, I want to try and copy what he does."

J2SkiNews wrote:

The competition was won by Norway's Henrik Kristoffersen, with Austria's Marcel Hirscher taking silver and Switzerland's Daniel Yule the bronze.

GOLD: Andre Myhrer (SE) 1:38.99
SILVER: Ramon Zenhäusern (CH) +0.34
BRONZE: Michael Matt (AU) +0.67

Hirscher skied out in the first run!!!!

Apologies for any confusion there Mr.Beep; I think our news man has been up late, watching it live, too many nights in a row... 8)

I've amended it with the result, which was Gold to Andre Myhrer, Silver to Ramon Zenhaeusern and Bronze to Michael Matt.

Apologies all. I got the details from a BBC report first thing this morning but now wonder if I was looking at the wrong report. A press release came in to J2Ski Editorial Towers at 6am with the British quotes but no info on the race results beyond Dave Ryding's performance. It did say he'd next be competing at the next Winter Olympics in Tokyo so I thought I'd been smart spotting that error whilst half asleep but then getting the actual race result wrong is obviously a complete fail.